Queens West Villager what matters to us living here

Materials for the Arts LIC HQ. (Terry Chao)

It all started with an idea and a used refrigerator.

Now, more than three decades later, Materials for the Arts - the city's largest non-profit municipal reuse program - offers artists thousands of items that otherwise would have been headed for the trash.

Discarded goods – ranging from Sesame Street cassette tapes to severed mannequin limbs to Marc Jacobs leather purse swatches – fill the many cubbyholes, boxes and bins in Materials for the Arts’ headquarters on the third floor of 33-00 Northern Boulevard in Long Island City.   

Founded in 1978 by artist Angela Freemont, Materials for the Arts was born out of necessity. Freemont had been working in the Central Park Zoo when a problem arose: she needed a refrigerator to store vital medicine for the animals, but funds were limited. She put out a public service announcement with the help of a local radio station and within seconds, phones were ringing off the hook, according to Julia Metro, executive assistant of Friends of Materials for the Arts.

“It started as a one-person operation, just Angela with the phone. It has now grown into a twelve-person operation housed in a 35,000-square-foot facility,” Metro said.

The service is a “godsend,” said Carla Torres, an artist from Local Project, one of Materials for the Arts’ member organizations. “It’s the first place that I came to when we became non-profit 10 years ago. I don’t know what I would do without it.”

Run by the city Department of Cultural Affairs, Materials for the Arts works with the departments of Sanitation and Education in collecting a wide variety of reusable products from business and individual donors.  Materials for the Arts makes its wares available, at no cost, to 4,400 member organizations that include public schools and art programs.

Donations, which are tax-deductible, are accepted on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays are “shopping days,” when members grab a shopping cart and take as much as they need. “The only thing we ask is that you send the donor a thank you letter,” said curator Georgia Muenster.

Materials for the Arts also offers field trips, residency programs and workshops with titles like “Paper: From Pulp to Fiction” and “Creative Infusion: The Art of Reuse.” The program reaches thousands of students and educators annually, working with the community to teach instructors how to use resources efficiently in the classroom and beyond.

In December, the program hosted an exhibition called, “Creative Reuse in New York City,” showcasing work from three nonprofit member organizations: Flux Factory, Local Project and Free Style Arts Association as well as from educational workshop participants.

Materials for the Arts challenges conventional ways of viewing everyday objects – and reincarnates, say, an empty maple syrup bottle and old clothes hangers into a wire-framed equine statue, into a creation by artists Joy Suarez and Louie Miranda.

“We make sure that art is always available for everyone. Kids will come in all the time and say, ‘But I don’t have any paper,’ and I’ll tell them, ‘What are you talking about? You do! Just turn that poster over you were about to throw out and draw on the back of it,’” said John Cloud Kaiser, Materials for the Arts’ educational adviser. “We really try to inspire people to be more resourceful and tell them you always have art supplies.”

Terry Chao is a freelance journalist based in New York City.